Deviant since Oct 14, 2008Premium Member until Mar 28, 2016, given by saperlipop

NO LLAMA PLEASE!

Art Zone

Personal Zone

Misc. Zone

This is the place where you can personalize your profile!
But, how?

By moving, adding and personalizing widgets.

You can drag and drop to rearrange.

You can edit widgets to customize them.

The bottom has widgets you can add!

Some widgets you can only access when you get a Premium Membership.

Some widgets have options that are only available when you get a Premium Membership.

We've split the page into zones!

Certain widgets can only be added to certain zones.

"Why," you ask? Because we want profile pages to have freedom of customization, but also to have some consistency. This way, when anyone visits a deviant, they know they can always find the art in the top left, and personal info in the top right.

I know that I am amateur and I never feel comfortable enough to give guidelines of any sort, but after few years of dA life, I think that this is the right time to share some tips. I am very humbled, really, and I don't want to sound too "cliché".

Composition is paramount. Always keep in mind how you want to drive the eye of the person that looks at your work. A scene with too many foreground elements, without a main subject, will hardly attract the viewer's attraction.

Cost value of art material. Do not be impressed by people that brag about the high quality pencils, media or camera that they used for their work. At the end of the day, what is important is the artistic achievement. Of course, good tools help to accomplish great results, but if you are amateur and passionate, you will do great with drawing material even bought from a "dollar store", or a point-and-shoot mainstream camera.

How does my work looks as a small thumb? This is even more important than the full view result, in my opinion. The greater it looks as a small thumb, when people are browsing on dA, the more they will desire to stop and to open the image.

"Let them want some more" I am a great partisan of moderation, in term of subjects to publish. I try to be varied. What I would avoid the most, it is to publish the same subject, but with different angles and/or brilliance, hues, etc, at least not in the same batch, unless those are photos from my stock account.

On the other hand, I do sometimes work on a new piece of the same subject - especially drawings - when I see that I can do some progress from a time into another.

Using a tablet for digital drawing. Using a mouse was OK till I decided to take a grip on my Wacom Bamboo tablet I put on the shelf not a long time after buying it. At first, I felt overly clumsy with this thing, till I figured how to put it on my right side, with my left hand controlling brush size with the keyboard.

Taking a picture of a drawing. This is what I hate the most when I finish a drawing! I never feel that the digital image of what I have on my canvas is worth to see, but I try to learn. Just a few tricks: use a tripod as much as possible, and avoid at all cost direct light. Also, once the picture is digitalized, use Levels feature of Photoshop (or any imaging software) to boost the contrasts.

Using a digital frame for drawing models. Of course, more and more people have a wi-fi tablet at hand, but for some people like me, I like using a picture digital frame to be able to switch between models, where I have no room for using a laptop or a desktop.

deviantID

It has been more than 3 years that I am on DA now and I am so privileged to know so many great artists and good friends around!! I am living in Montreal, Canada, where I work as software engineer in the video game industry. Even though my work does not involve art at all, art is my greatest passion! I spend my free time producing drawings or taking photos.

My biggest trade is traditional art (pencils, charcoal, pastels and watercolor) and I love many kind of subjects (portraits, figures, animals, landscapes, trees, abstract & surreal), not to forget a lot of fan art (Star Wars, Tolkien, Blade Runner, Milla Jovovich, etc... With the influence of my DA friends, I improved in photography and got introduced to digital art (some manips and digital paintings), which becomes more and more relevant.

My gallery contains many stock images that you may use without restriction.